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The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.

Thomas Malthus

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Thomas Malthus
Age: 68 †
Born: 1766
Born: February 14
Died: 1834
Died: December 23
Anglican Priest
Demographer
Economist
Essayist
Mathematician
Scientist
Sociologist
Statistician
Warwickshire
England
Thomas R. Malthus
Theory
Theories
Ought
Practicals
Philosophy
Account
Business
Practical
Firsts
Conclusion
First
Till
Things
Accounts
Ground

More quotes by Thomas Malthus

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In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.
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The most baleful mischiefs may be expected from the unmanly conduct of not daring to face truth because it is unpleasing.
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Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
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Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.
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Had population and food increased in the same ratio, it is probable that man might never have emerged from the savage state.
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I feel no doubt whatever that the parish laws of England have contributed to raise the price of provisions and to lower the real price of labour.
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The science of political economy is essentially practical, and applicable to the common business of human life. There are few branches of human knowledge where false views may do more harm, or just views more good.
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Malthus married in 1804 and beat three children with his wife
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The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals is the means of his support - the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means.
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On the whole it may be observed, that the specific use of a body of unproductive consumers, is to give encouragement to wealth by maintaining such a balance between produce and consumption as will give the greatest exchangeable value to the results of the national industry.
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The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.
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To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.
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The natural inequality of the two powers of population and of production in the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their efforts equal, form the great difficulty that to me appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society.
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Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.
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The doctrine of population has been conspicuously absent, not because I doubt in the least its truth and vast importance, but because it forms no part of the direct problem of economics.
Thomas Malthus
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Population trends have always provoked doom-fraught oracles, because their popular interpreters suppose that every new series will be infinitely sustained yet, beyond the short term, expectations based on them are never fulfilled.
Thomas Malthus
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The perpetual struggle for room and food.
Thomas Malthus
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The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.
Thomas Malthus
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The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.
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The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years.
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